Yeah, I am a bit worried about the possible or indeed likely change in transport, bad and all as things are , at least there are direct links to Kamppi. The 121k or 16 from Henttaa itself, even though they run only a few times a day. Then from Suurpelto there is the 107 which is a min.20 min walk for me, but at least it is a regular connection.

I have to say I really dislike Suurpelto. It is being built into a really high-density residential area, and while there is a lot of forested area with trails and a park close by, there are absolutely no facilities apart from a tiny SIWA which is supposedly temporary, ie. it is in a pre-fab. It seems to be a mix of social and private, the park already seems to be attracting youths hanging around. I just can't understand how they can build such a huge place with no facilities. In Slovenia for example (and Finns would think themselves far above Slovenia...) whenever they build new blocks of flats, there are almost never ground floor flats if in an urban area, the ground floor is usually a cafe, shops and some other business areas. I really miss the cafe culture in Slovenia, because they sell both coffee and alcohol, so the youth have somewhere to go and have coffee, soft drinks etc.,the adults can drink beer or wine etc. if they want. You rarely see gangs of youth hanging around, they go to the cafes and sit there for a few hours over a coffee.

Re: A cautionary tale

biscayne wrote:I have to say I really dislike Suurpelto. It is being built into a really high-density residential area, and while there is a lot of forested area with trails and a park close by, there are absolutely no facilities apart from a tiny SIWA which is supposedly temporary, ie. it is in a pre-fab. It seems to be a mix of social and private, the park already seems to be attracting youths hanging around. I just can't understand how they can build such a huge place with no facilities.

Well, the Siwa is quite obviously temporary... would be a ridiculous arrangement otherwise. ;>

biscayne wrote:In Slovenia for example (and Finns would think themselves far above Slovenia...) whenever they build new blocks of flats, there are almost never ground floor flats if in an urban area, the ground floor is usually a cafe, shops and some other business areas. I really miss the cafe culture in Slovenia, because they sell both coffee and alcohol, so the youth have somewhere to go and have coffee, soft drinks etc.,the adults can drink beer or wine etc. if they want. You rarely see gangs of youth hanging around, they go to the cafes and sit there for a few hours over a coffee.

Come see Ylä-Olari or Kuitinmäki; they tried that here already in the 1970s. Things are now in a rather sad shape, though. You can still see the architects' original idea - how they tried their earnest to make it lively here, deliberately blending the businesses and services among the apartment blocks and creating these communities with local services just around the corner, or in the same building - and for a while, that apparently worked, too. But those days seem to have passed. I guess the Iso Omena mall took the steam out of that and now it's pretty quiet here.

Now the malls are basically where all the action is. Or if that is not good enough, people go downtown. Which is downtown Helsinki, of course. Despite the name "Espoon keskus", Espoo does not really have a city center.

Thank you for posting those plans and that info re. Suurpelto. Very interesting. It's hard to decide whether that will actually make the place better or worse. It would be handy to have a few services nearby, but the area to me seems like it could become a ticking timebomb. The flats look nice now, but I am curious how it will look in the future.

As said, I am in the "real" Henttaa, seems to be quite Swedish speaking, all OKT's, very large lots, each house including the one I bought into is far from the neighbouring house. The houses are all different in terms of design, size etc. so you can see that the place grew organically and was not a "planned" area. The locals are going mental about Suurpelto, as they want to keep their illusion of living in a forest in the city.....but already kids on light motorbikes are tearing up and down......a road through the forest is threatened as well as a car park at the end of my road for city folk to park and go into the forest.....

This little enclave may not be able to remain a hidden secret any longer. I'm worried will the value of the house go down too, as I don't think I will stay to be honest.

biscayne wrote:Thank you for posting those plans and that info re. Suurpelto. Very interesting. It's hard to decide whether that will actually make the place better or worse. It would be handy to have a few services nearby, but the area to me seems like it could become a ticking timebomb. The flats look nice now, but I am curious how it will look in the future.

By the way, do you happen to know what is the function of that curious-looking, white, little wedge-shaped building located in Suurpelto somewhere between Gertrudinpolku and Viisastenpolku, or thereabouts? I've often been wondering about that when riding past on a bus.

biscayne wrote:As said, I am in the "real" Henttaa, seems to be quite Swedish speaking, all OKT's, very large lots, each house including the one I bought into is far from the neighbouring house. The houses are all different in terms of design, size etc. so you can see that the place grew organically and was not a "planned" area. The locals are going mental about Suurpelto, as they want to keep their illusion of living in a forest in the city.....but already kids on light motorbikes are tearing up and down......a road through the forest is threatened as well as a car park at the end of my road for city folk to park and go into the forest.....

Then again, there's a constant, serious shortage of reasonably-priced apartments in the capital area - especially in Helsinki, but Espoo gets some major spillover effect, too. (Or should I rather say, Espoo - as it stands now - is the spillover effect of Helsinki.) So I guess those isolated, semi-hidden sanctuaries can no longer expect to remain that way.

biscayne wrote:I'm worried will the value of the house go down too, as I don't think I will stay to be honest.

Hmm. I guess it all depends on what kind of a "profile" or reputation the Suurpelto area will take on later, once the construction is finished and the dust has settled. One thing that springs to mind is that there are now schools nearby. Families with children might be interested in getting a house and a yard on their own, near the school...

If it's now still a predominantly Swedish-speaking community, and has been that way since the beginning, I can imagine not everyone is thrilled, though.

That funny building is supposedly a sort of information center, haven't been in it yet, never really seems to be anyone there. Again, thanks a lot for putting those plans up. I don't know why, but I just have a bad feeling about Suurpelto- I absolutely can be wrong, only time will tell, but I would not be surprised if it became a semi ghetto.

Took a walk around Henttaa, wow, there are some really pimped out houses there, driveways full of top notch jeeps, bmws, etc. A lot of gardens with professional landscaping too, some of the houses look like the owners were on exchange in the US 20 years ago and said "yeah, I wanna McMansion too", so if Suurpelto goes a little "in the hood", there will be a lot of pissed off "better folk"........

20+ years ago all the managers at Nokia were getting nice fat stock options... I guess quite a lot of those "mansions" were built then.

Saunalahti is another community in Espoo which sprang up out of nothing: high density housing with little or no amenities. There were some nice "architects'" villas around the bay, with personal moorings and sea views but now they are surrounded by medium-rise blocks of flats.

I remember Suurpelto being built - it took months and months to drain the swamp, pump in all the concrete and hammer in the piles to stabilise the foundations. It seemed like madness at the time but there is no more land in the south along the Länsiväylä corridor so I guess there was no choice.

What worries me now is just how they will "feed" all these people into the metro system. We are going to be in the middle of one huge traffic jam every morning when commuters bus or drive into Matinkyla - not looking forward to that.

Rosamunda wrote:What worries me now is just how they will "feed" all these people into the metro system. We are going to be in the middle of one huge traffic jam every morning when commuters bus or drive into Matinkyla - not looking forward to that.

You got your hers and hims mixed up so much that I can't tell if you're married to a male or a female. Not that it really matters as both sexes can be equally disappointing. I'm guessing you're talking about a male though.

Anyway all I can say is that it's obviously more important to see the signs early on. You don't drop 10k or whatever into a house with someone if there are signs they will be a lazy ass afterwards.

My ex was the same. Spent all of MY money so she could just eventually sit around in front of the television surrounded by !"#¤% candlestick holders and @#$% jewellery holders and play singstar with her pissis friends. Yeah I was young and stupid and at the time it didn't think that money was so important. I still kind of don't. In the end I left her and everything else and told her that it all made me sick and that she could drown in it. Honestly it's actually all quite liberating.

I know you needed to vent but you could have summed it all up as "Hey try and discern if your spouse is going to be a total unachiveing lazy ass after you drop a lot of money in the relationship." I wrote an essay on the subject once.